Jacki’s Review of Cobb Salad, Blue Cheese Dressing and Cherry Chocolate Ice Cream

I made the BBQ Cobb Salad for dinner on Sunday along with the Zesty Blue Cheese dressing and it was sooo good.  It took a bit of time to get everything prepared but very worth it.  It was raining so I just cooked some chicken tenderloins with BBQ sauce on them in the oven until they were done.  I forgot to buy a tomato and we didn’t have any ripe in the garden so I used a fresh garden cucumber instead.  I mixed up the blue cheese dressing a few hours ahead of time so it could chill and blend flavors.  I only used one tsp of fresh pressed garlic which was plenty and I used  a little more than 1/4 tsp of table salt instead of the 1/2 tsp of kosher salt.  It was flavorful and zesty!  I served the salad with some whole wheat bread and it made for a great meal. 

Zesty Blue Cheese Dressing

BBQ Chicken Cobb Salad

Since we are all friends I will just be honest about my Cherry Chocolate Ice Cream almost disaster.  I don’t have an ice cream maker although I would really like to get one of those Cuisinart ones where you don’t have to use ice and salt.  But, I came up with another plan for now.  I bought some Edy’s slow churned vanilla ice cream and let it soften for a few minutes on the counter.  I pitted the cherries with the straw as mentioned in the cookbook and quartered them.  I grated the dark chocolate in my food processor.  Then I mixed them all together.  The problem was the ice cream was very soft and after I mixed in the cherries and chocolate it was really soft.  I put it in the freezer and checked it awhile later and it was total liquid!  I left it in there and it eventually hardened up and was actually quite good but a bit on the icy side.  If you do the store bought route I would strongly suggest using a good quality regular vanilla ice cream because I think the slow churned has more air in it or something.    Next time I will just buy regular vanilla and mix in the cherries and chocolate just before serving.  Tarin, I hope your mom buys an ice cream maker so you can make the recipe as directed and report on it :)